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Tag Archives: Red Sox

I had an idea for the cover of my new book, my third, a project on which I’ve been quietly at work. The front cover was going to be a photo of one of my paintings, the back cover a photo of me leaning against a stone wall, the wall rising some 15 feet and covered in hanging vines turned red with autumn’s imperative. But my wife Susan and I never coordinated picture schedules and times and as the deadline approached for all exterior and interior files to be readied for formatting and printing I changed my mind and decided to work with something quieter. I chose the photo above.

This photo will be wrapped around the book in its entirety — front cover, spine, and back, with title and author words on the front and spine and a quote from the one person to whom I have sent the book – in Word document – for pre-publish review. Her feedback has arrived and the boys from Bulgaria who do my covers have already placed Jamie and her thoughtful review front and center on the back. They’ve sent me the first draft and I could share it here now, but why spoil the secret. If good things come to those who wait, please wait a little longer.

Cover aside, I am most excited with what’s inside, completely new prose territory for me. If nothing ventured is nothing gained, well, I have ventured deep into the dusty, dusky inner workings of my mind.

The stars were out shining over Portland last night. The Red Sox have by magic staved off, for the day, an increasing sense of fear and loathing, just another summer past-time those of us in The Nation know well. Today’s the end of Major League Baseball’s trading deadline and it’s hard to say which way the kids in Red Sox, and their bosses, will go. Buy? Sell? Punt? We shall see.

This post marks the beginning of a new effort from me in that part of my world defined as blogging. I feel done, I felt it very strongly in the recliner this morning, with political posts and long examinations of life in the big city, yes the big planet, and even those earlier blogging tales of drunkenness and serious stupidity and the slow climb back to respectability (!), as such, and everything else that’s previously appeared in this verbial cyber spot. It’s my intention from here on out to offer up small tidbits of this and that, anything that I believe helps to move every reader in the direction of saving the planet. Which, by the way, will be a call sign, so to speak, for me, here out – #savetheplanet .

So, if you are follower of this blog or a noticer of its appearance on some social site like Facebook or Twitter, or perhaps a member of my small but loyal email community, I offer, going forward, freebies and suggestions and true glimpses into genius and wonder and abundance. Ways in which we gets to love each other, better than yesterday. Offered from way over here.

I’m grateful for Ted Talks and I hope you are too. There is something sweet about giving people a voice, different and varied people, with lots of worthy things to say. This blog will feature at least one engaging Ted Talk every week. They’re generally less than 19 minutes, sometimes much less than that. I truly hope you’ll invest a small slice of time, and maybe be nudged just a little bit toward wonder. Here’s this week’s : www.ted.com/talks/j_j_abrams_mystery_box

I’m a big J.J. Abrams fan, and a favorite movie is the dramatically underappreciated and little noticed “Super 8”. What a blessing to slip into childhood again, for a little while. Here’s just a quick peek: www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1e4MT5VhZo

The title of this post – and it’s going to be the same title every week from now on – is a love letter, in a way, to the work of one of my favorite authors, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. I got to see him speak at Harvard University and again, 3000 miles away, at UC Berkeley. In fact, following that adventure – wild and crazy wonderful with my friend and mentor Dr. Doug Martin and a weekend at the Durant Hotel, including my first ever visit to Blondies Pizza on a 1:00 a.m. roll down Durant chasing Doug in his motorized chair – it was after all that I found myself on the same flight with Dr. Thompson traveling from San Francisco to Chicago and, screwing up enough courage to introduce myself, had the great fortune to spend about an hour and a half chatting with the Gonzo man. That story can be found on a previous post in this very same blog page (“Hunter and Me”). For now, here’s just a smidge of the good Doctor’s words, a quite famous passage in fact: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MivwinnMKhI

Today, August 1, turns out to be, among many things, Herman Melville’s birthday. It also turns out that he bought a farm in The Berkshires at the western edge of my home state Massachusetts. The wonderful on-line magazine “Brain Pickings” published an article about him today, and a few inches down is a paragraph in which Melville describes his daily routine on the farm. It’s worth reading: www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/30/herman-melville-daily-routine/